In case of fire
by GroundPetrel
Summary: After New Dawn, the team encounters new creatures, relationship SNAFUs, et cetera. All seems (relatively) normal-but a shadowy conspiracy plots from the shadows, intent on seizing control of time itself, and all those reporters are wondering what happened to all of their Convergence footage. First episode of a hypothetical season 6. As for a disclaimer-do I sound like Tim Haines?
1. Chapter 1

**I don't own Primeval or its characters. Duh. **

***Pre-credits scene***

Gerald Loughlin was not a bad person. Sure, he liked to run shirtless, but he had the decency to do so out on the most barren areas of Dartmoor, where few people could see his less-than-stellar physique and carpet of unattractive hair. Sure, he occasionally got perhaps a little more drunk than was socially acceptable at his local bar, but he usually remembered to pay for the inevitable damage in a reasonable amount of time. In any event, he did not deserve the relatively slow and agonizingly painful death that he was about to suffer.

Gerald was on his Saturday morning jog (eternally trying to lose those fifteen pounds that somehow crept up on him over the years), humming along to a Billy Joel song on his iPod while running shirtless on a particularly out-of-the-way trail, when he saw the _thing_. It was only a meter long, and a good half of that was its preposterously long, feathered tail, but that was unusually large for a British bird, and anyway this wasn't like any bird that Gerald Loughlin had ever seen before. It was sleek and elongated, with a rigid, bony tail with long, hairlike brown feathers fringing the edges. Its legs were long, and its gait bouncy, like that of a leaping animal such as a kangaroo. Its arms were long, clawed, and featherless, like some monkey from hell's grasping limbs. Its head, however, was the most striking part. A single immense scale covered the upper side of the animal's head, with two holes around the alert eyes with their constricted pupils. Some sort of hooklike protrusions grew from the bottom rear corners of the animal's lower jaws, and Gerald was sure that the creature had teeth. Two fangs, each easily two and a half centimeters—huge, for such a small animal—protruded from its upper jaws, ending a centimeter or so below the bottom edge of the lower jaws. Two ivory points stuck up through twin holes in its snout—were those teeth, too?

"What the heck are you?" said Gerald, pulling out his earbuds and crouching for a closer look. The animal jumped back, skittish, but tentatively sidled forwards when Gerald offered his hand to sniff.

Gerald heard a rustling in the heath. He realized that the harsh, irregular chirping that he had been hearing was not birdsong, as he had unconsciously assumed, but something else.

He looked up. There were easily a dozen of the creatures now, about half of them as big as the one in front of him, the rest perhaps eighty centimeters in length. He was surrounded. The creatures closed in slowly, flicking their tails and chirping at one another.

"Where did you lot come from?" said Gerald, trying to ignore the prickling feeling of worry in his gut.

The animal in front of him raised its tail sharply, bending it near the base. All movement and chatter stopped immediately.

_Uh-oh_.

The lead animal dropped its tail. The pack surged forwards as one.

Gerald had a brief moment of shock, and then pain exploded across his body as the animals flung themselves at him, grabbed on with their arms, opened their jaws impossibly wide, and latched themselves to his flesh. Their stabbing fangs, accompanied by a row of fangs in their palates, secured their jaws loosely, while the tiny hind teeth, as sharp as obsidian, shredded Gerald's skin and muscular fascia.

Gerald screamed and thrashed, and about half the pack leaped off to avoid his flailing arms. The lead creature chattered a quick, screeching phrase, and the rest of the pack abandoned ship.

Gerald was pouring blood, his muscles showing in places and at his left femoral artery punctured in at least two places. He stumbled away from the silent semicircle of death and broke into a lumbering run along the trail, hoping against hope that he could outrun the monsters. His car was only two miles back…come on…come on…

The creatures loped along with their curious bounding gaits. One jumped, and tore a good-sized piece of flesh off of Gerald's back. He screamed again and swatted at it, but it was too nimble.

Gerald had lost multiple pints of blood already. His femoral artery, punctured by creature fangs, was hemorrhaging blood, the shredded remains of his torso skin hanging, weblike, over his torn fascia and still-mostly-intact muscles, his ruined capillary network leaking blood and plasma.

Another creature; this one hit one of the ligaments in the back of his knee. Gerald buckled, but forced himself to stay upright.

He could feel himself going numb, the shock starting to grab hold of his body.

Gerald's foot hit a root, and he tripped. The pack screeched and struck as one.

Nobody heard Gerald's screams.

**Act 1: **

**A room in a mysterious building: **

The room was dark, but the woman didn't mind. She didn't recognize the man whose infrared signature she saw in the chair, but she didn't mind that, either. She was an assassin, after all, and the man was a representative of her employers. This was the way they did things, and she frankly didn't care.

The man, who was reading from a tablet computer with a soft backlight, clearly designed so as to let him read without revealing himself, spoke up, skipping introductions entirely.

Not for the first time, the woman laughed internally at her employers' paranoia.

"Well, I can see only a few issues with your report. Our research has confirmed that you followed your instructions to the letter. A pity about Maitland getting in the way, but at least you kept your cover. Of course, you had to fake your death after your little fall, but we needed to retire Miss Leonard anyway. The only major issue here is the New Dawn device."

"Yeah, the physics of it was off or something. You fools are going to need to go back and check your math."

Anyone else would have been disappeared for a statement like that. The woman merely received a snide laugh.

"Yes. Apparently we do. On the plus side, we managed to snag some potentially useful creatures from the Convergence event."

"Oh, joy. Have fun with your new pets."

"Can we stay on topic, please? Your mission is as follows: Infiltrate and destroy the Anomaly Research Centre. Every agent on their alpha team, their entire administrative leadership. Make Lester's and Anderson's deaths especially painful. If possible, kill Temple in front of Maitland. Clone and destroy every piece of software, destroy their weapons and other technology, delete all records—saving us some copies, of course—get us all of their captive creatures, and destroy whatever is left."

"Maitland has a pet flying lizard, and Temple has some irritating dicynodonts. They most likely aren't worth weaponizing. What should I do with them?"

"The dicynodonts might be useful if mircochipped. They are burrowers, yes? The lizard—we don't care. Use it for one of your sick experiments, if you like."

"Sick? This coming from the guys who tortured Agent Gull for three hours straight? With the stick with the fishhooks and everything?"

"Moving on. Be as fast and efficient as possible. Once you are done with the ARC, we can worry about the Americans and the Russians."

"A good thing you guys moved the base to Turkey, huh? Now your biggest problem is a bunch of amateurs."

"What do you know about our recent moves?"

"Oh, just what June told me while we were having a little three-way chat with a Russian spy named Tatiana Sholoshkova. I took her identity, by the way. She's useable now that June's done solidifying "her" background. She screamed so nicely when June cut up her…"

"Please. We are not interested in hearing about your pathetic sadistic exploits with Number Six. We would also suggest therapy for your persistent psychological issues."

"Hah. You and I both know my…love of pain makes me more effective. And that's quite rich, coming from the guy who just told me to kill a guy in front of his girl."

"Perhaps. Now, I would advise you to prepare. You leave in three hours. Do you need to get anything before you go?"

"Just some lunch. I'm starving," she said, slipping into a thick Russian accent from somewhere north of Baikal. "What do you have in this dump's mess hall?"

The man sighed.

"Fine. But be fast, April. Remember, we didn't spend a billion dollars on you and your…alterations for slow or sloppy work."

"You know how effective I am—Minister Hypocrite. Should've had a lackey brief me for you, dumbass."

She lived for that little sharp intake of breath from surprised people. It was always the most fun when she killed the surprised person immediately afterwards, of course, but killing her employers was not a very good idea under the best of circumstances. And besides, someone might miss the new Defense Minister.

**Anomaly Research Centre. **

Captain Hilary Becker was worried. Extremely worried. More worried than he had ever been when the only loves of his life had been guns and explosives.

_Now, Jess_, he thought, _is much harder and more dangerous to handle—but so much more rewarding_.

Right now, though, he was in a little bit of trouble with Jess, because of the relatively minor mistake of forgetting their one-month dating anniversary. Seriously—a one-month anniversary? He had to remember that, plus birthdays, plus holidays, plus yearly anniversaries now? Plus getting little things at other random moments for bonus points? Seriously?

Anyway, he was pretty sure that Jess was not entirely serious with her banishment of him from her sight for the entire week. Of course, Connor assured him that it was all over now, but then again Connor's idea of a hot date was watching a Doctor Who marathon on a couch with Abby. Not exactly Mr. Romance, or a good person to go to for relationship advice. Matt was new to this, too, so he was useless, going to Emily or Abby would be too embarrassing, and Lester—no. Just…no.

So Becker was in the armory, lovingly polishing a Heckler-Koch G-36 assault rifle that he'd picked up a month or two back, soon after the Kings Cross anomaly incident and the Convergence, when the anomaly siren blared. Always a man of action, he grabbed an armful of EMDs and ran for the car park.

Connor Temple was enduring his own relationship issues—these surrounding his "brilliant plan" to have a dinosaur-themed wedding in the ARC. Not only was Abby not amused, but Lester had overheard Connor enthusiastically detailing his plan to Abby and had blown a gasket about the sheer number of breaches of protocol that the plan entailed. Ten minutes of his boss's yelling had left Connor thoroughly cowed.

Connor had never been so happy to hear the anomaly siren in his life.

Matt jogged into the hub from somewhere in the corridors.

"Talk to me, Jess."

"Locating now…it's in Dartmoor. In the middle of nowhere, too—there's nothing but a few jogging trails out there. Downloading the coordinates to your black boxes now."

"'Scuse me, Lester," said Connor, ducking down towards his lab to grab his dating calculator and earpiece (as to why he took it out in the first place…best not to ask). He nearly ran in to Becker as he reached the elevator.

James Lester stopped himself in mid-rant, coughed lightly, muttered a choice remark about amateur staff, and poured himself a drink from his office's shiny new water cooler. He then closed the door, booted up his computer, activated his brand-new voice message software, cleared his throat, and mentally steeled himself.

"Minister; I hope that this doesn't reach you at a bad time. We have another one, in Dartmoor. Our team is on their way. I will notify you if backup is needed."

Lester sent off the message to the Minister's email address, hit the "close" button on the voice message software perhaps a tad harder than was absolutely necessary, and voiced a few rather harsh thoughts about new requirements, demeaning software, new-fangled annoyances, and executive meddling.

James Lester was obviously not a fan of the Minister's new obsession with being constantly updated by voice or video message. He was (rightly, as it would later turn out) certain that the whole thing was for some ulterior purpose.

Lester looked at his itinerary, and groaned. Not another day of keeping those snooping reporters from finding out where all of their videos and photos from the Convergence event had gone. He could have been an ambassador by now, and instead he was leading some pathetic tabloid monkeys on a wild goose chase.

**Dartmoor. Three hours later. **

"So…Matt."

"What, Becker?"

"I need help with my relationship with Jess."

Matt laughed softly. "Trust me, if I wasn't fumbling my way through the romance jungle, too, I'd give you all the advice I could muster. But I'm just winging it myself. Sorry, mate."

Becker chuckled. "Yeah. It was a long shot anyway."

They turned the microphones on their earpieces back on.

"Connor, what've you got?"

Connor's voice came through the earpiece along with a considerable amount of wind-induced static.

"Just some tracks. They look a little like bird tracks—like a long-toed pheasant with no rear toes. There are a lot of them—five sets, six, seven, more than ten now. They mill around here, and then split up again…"

"Right. We have the anomaly. We're setting up the locking device now."

"Roger that, Matt. What do you have on the age rating?"

Becker kept watch while Matt locked the anomaly and took a reading.

"It says about fifty million years in the future. That's odd—I didn't think that Earth could sustain life after the event that created the future predators."

"Well, we've probably averted that future…"

"Then how do you explain the predators we got last week? We stopped New Dawn, but the future event still happened somehow."

"Yeah, but—oh, crap."

"What?"

"Blood. A lot of it. Here on the trail. The tracks are all over here. Oh, my god. There's a guy here. He's been torn to bits. It's fresh. There's flies and stuff and…not much flesh on the top side. Whatever killed him picked him clean up there, but it could come back. Abby, check out his legs; see if you can tell why there's so much blood there."

"Connor, his legs have been shredded. Whatever did this literally flayed his skin and ripped it off."

"So what are we looking for?"

"Some sort of bird, judging by those tracks. Maybe a small dinosaur? A raptor, or maybe a small terror bird."

"But the anomaly's from the future," interjected Becker. "And we haven't met birds or anything like them from the future yet."

"Well, whatever it is, it's small but fast," said Abby. "And there's probably more than one. Emily, have you brought the Special Forces squad?"

"On my way. I'm about halfway to Matt's position right now."

"Good. Connor, come on. Let's get back to the others, quick. I don't want to spend too much time near a recent kill."

"Abby?"

"What?"

"The grass over there, on that hill—isn't the wind blowing south?"

"Yeah? So?"

"So why are there furrows in the grass going east to west?"

They shared a look. Then Abby spoke.

"Run. Now."

They ran. Abby could hear the chirps and shrieks of _something_ behind them, to either side, and even slightly ahead of them, getting ever closer and tracking every change in direction with the eerie precision of advanced pack hunting animals. They were a mile from Becker and Matt. There was no way they would make it…two EMDs would have to be enough…but judging by the number of creatures she could hear, they wouldn't.

**Creature POV: **

The spinetail alpha had no trouble tracking the big, multicolored mammals. They were clumsy, despite their moderate size, and made no effort to be stealthy as the pack pursued them. They would make good food; the one that the pack had killed earlier had been quite tasty, if a little stringy. These two were leaner, and seemed to be even less furry, except on their heads. That was new—food without fur. It made the spinetails' hunting strategy even more effective than usual, as the multicolored _things_ that the mammals had instead of fur put up a little resistance.

The first one had had some sort of thick spiderweb and a shiny rock tangled in its strange…fur? Pelt? Hide? These two did not, but they seemed to be holding some sort of shiny metallic things instead. That was odd. Bipedal mammals that could hold things. The alpha's normal prey was considerably larger than these creatures, could not hold things, walked on all fours, and had tusks. Huge tusks. These creatures showed no sign of tusks.

Suddenly, a spinetail on the left flank screeched in pain. The alpha called out a quick signal, and the pack converged on the fallen animal. More of the mammals, one multicolored and four with black hides, stood over the pack's third-youngest hunter, which was twitching softly. The alpha twitched an attack signal. The pack moved in, but one of the black-shelled mammals noticed. It gave a bugling alarm call, and pulled up its shiny thing, as did the others as they saw what was coming for them.

Blue pulses, like lightning, struck from the shiny things with whining noises. More whining noises came from behind, and the alpha realized that the mammals that the pack had been hunting were now the hunters.

The alpha shrieked a retreat pattern, and the pack broke off, down three members.

The alpha cursed her luck. She had had a nagging suspicion from the start that going through the glowing light was a bad idea. She really needed to trust her gut more.

**Creature bio: Spinetail. **

**The spinetail is a pack-hunting future crocodile with some features (such as a bipedal gait and Stage 2 protofeathers) reminiscent of birds and some dinosaurs. As intelligent as modern humans, spinetails are equipped with a terrifying array of teeth and a set of (relatively) huge hand claws. Their tails are fringed with venomous protofeathers as a defense mechanism against larger, scarier predators. The venom causes excruciating pain, and most animals know better than to try eating spinetails. **

**Creatures that will be used later (in no particular order): **

_**Dilophosaurus wetherelli**_

**Fleshreaver (description later—this one's going to be a "special treat")**

_**Sinusonasus magnodens**_**, together with**_** Beipaosaurus **_**and **_**Microraptor zhaoianus**_

_**Dinornis maximus**_** (giant moa) together with **_**Harpagornis moorei**_** (Haast's Eagle)**

_**Propleopus oscillans**_** (flesh roo) and **_**Thylacoleo carnifex**_** (drop-bear)**


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two: **

Location: James Lester's office. Anomaly Research Centre headquarters.

"Listen, you silly little man, I am a government official, not some low-rent hacker with nothing better to do than burn footage! Don't you have some celebrities to annoy, or Page Three pictures to mooch off of dirty Web sites, or in fact ANYTHING better to do than harass me about your so-called footage of dinosaurs that you claim is missing?"

James Lester hated journalists with a passion that smoldered like a fire in a coal seam. They had no respect for government secrets, and seemed to find it objectionable when those ham-handed American idiots let knowledge of their secret electronic spying programs slip out. Furthermore, they had a rather annoying knack for getting footage of anomalies and dinosaurs, and had a tendency to come calling to his phone line when Jess deleted their footage. Lester was absolutely certain that some Whitehall fat cat with the IQ of a small piece of granite had it in for him personally, and so had made this supposedly secure line the official number for disgruntled reporters.

"You annoying piece of office plankton, I have no time or energy to deal with your unhinged rantings about dinosaurs. I am far too busy at the moment, and in any event I am not a psychologist. Now leave me alone, and tell Rupert Murdoch and your superiors at the Daily Fail that they can kiss the Prime Minister's sedentary behind if they have a complaint."

He slammed the phone down, swearing and promising himself to get a new phone number.

Jess's voice came in over the brand-new intercom. That had been a useful new addition to the ARC. Now Lester didn't even have to leave his seat to yell at his staff.

"Sir, there's a woman at the front desk here to see you. She says that she's here on the Minister's orders, and that she's a liason from the Russian anomaly team. Do the Russians have an anomaly team?"

"Russian, you say? I thought that they dismantled their team last year. Procedural issues or something. Let me check with the Minister."

He dialed a number on his brand-new iPad, cursing new-fangled technology as he did so.

"Yes?" said the perky secretary on the other end of the video call.

"Get me the Minister at once. This is urgent."

"Please hold for a moment, sir."

The screen went black for a moment, and the new Defense Minister, Harold Duvall, made his appearance as he folded up a newspaper.

"Ah, Mr. Lester. What can I do for you today?"

"Please explain to me why a Russian agent is in the ARC's lobby claiming to be a new staffer. I was under the impression that the Russians had shut down their program pending further review."

"Well, you know, they still have a temporary team, and the Russian covert operations director said that his agents needed to work with and study some real professionals in the field. Ms. Sholoshkova is merely the agent who was selected. It was a completely random process, I assure you."

"Professional team? With the exception of Captain Becker and his men, I call bullshit. Connor Temple is the least professional man on the planet, Abby Maitland, despite her formidable fighting skills, refuses to harm the creatures if it can be avoided in any way—even in ways that jeopardize the mission—Matt Andersen is both from the future and possibly mad, Jess Parker is _nineteen_, and Emily Merchant is from over one hundred years ago. She still can't even drive. These are not professionals. They are rank amateurs. Brilliant rank amateurs who are excellent at their respective jobs, but amateurs nonetheless. They are even paid like amateurs. With respect, sir, why is the Russian here?"

Duvall grimaced and spread his hands. He was probably trying to look tired and harried, the picture of a politician who knew that a mess was out of his hands. Instead he merely looked patronizing and oily.

"It's not my fault, Mr. Lester. The Russian director insisted, and he called in some favors with higher-ups. My hands were tied. The Prime Minister himself ordered me to let her in after I tried to deny her access. I'm sorry. She's only here for a month, though."

Lester ground his teeth and kept several choice words inside his mouth, barely.

"Wonderful. Just wonderful. I hope that she speaks English, at least."

"Barely. She's got one hell of an accent. Oh, and Mr. Lester?"

"Yes, Minister?"

"Don't piss her off. She has a…reputation. Keep that in mind."

"Of course, sir," said Lester with barely disguised hostility, and terminated the call with a vengeful finger. Wonderful. A psychotic Russian, to be snooping around the team while they screwed up their jobs as usual. Just wonderful.

In the Defense Minister's office, the minister smiled to himself. April was in. He just needed to back up the story. Bribing a couple of the Prime Minister's secretaries would probably work. In under a month, the entire ARC alpha team would be dead, and that annoying Lester would be dead and rotting.

"What are they?" asked Becker.

Abby opened the jaws of the little creature at her feet. Altogether too many teeth greeted her.

"Well…they share some features of Eusuchia—modern crocodiles—but there are so many differences. For one, they have these teeth on their palates; crocodiles, unlike other reptiles, don't have those. Also, the feathers, and these scales on their heads—the head scales are like helmets. This is all one big plate, protecting the braincase. Connor, can you try to pull out one of those tail filaments, so we can see if it's feather or hair?"

"What is the difference?"

"If those are feathers, Emily, then these things are most likely just highly evolved crocodiles. Feathers are made of the same type of keratin as scales. Hair is different—if these filaments are hair, then someone's been messing with genetic engineering."

"Is that even possible?"

"After Helen Cutter's clone army, I'm not putting anything to do with DNA down to chance. Connor, what've you got?"

Connor yelped suddenly.

"Ow! The bloody thing stung me!"

He pulled back his hand, accidentally yanking a feather out as he did so.

"Ow! It's got some sort of barbs or something—it's stuck!"

Abby shared a look with Emily, and sighed.

"Here, let me see." She yanked the feather out without warning. Connor yelped. "See? Nothing to—uh-oh."

"What is wrong?" asked Emily.

"This thing's hollow. And there are barbs on the end. Just like a porcupine quill—oh, this can't be good."

"Maybe it's just hollow for no reason, and I'll get away with just a stung finger," said Connor, taking his finger out of his mouth for a moment.

There was a pause as Abby and Emily stared at Connor's finger. He got a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"It's swelling up from poison, isn't it."

Abby nodded.

Connor looked down. His finger was swelling and rapidly going purple. As he watched, the swelling spread to his hand, which started to go numb.

"Oh, _shit_."

Abby Maitland ran with the nurses through the incredibly clean halls of Mother of Mercy General Hospital, holding on to the stretcher with her left hand while clutching Connor's so far non-swollen right hand in her right. The nurses were yelling something about an unidentified toxin.

Connor was considerably worse for wear. His entire left side was swollen from the toxin, his face puffy and purple, his breath coming in wheezing gasps. Abby was reminded of the time when they had finagled some vacation time out of Lester and Connor had been stung by killer bees while stopping to use the restroom behind a cactus on the way from the airport to the Grand Canyon.

A little voice in the back of Abby's head said that she really should've been expecting this, given Connor's horrible karma and the fact that he had not suffered a near-death experience or an embarrassing injury for considerably more than three months. She mentally told that voice to shut up.

The medical team wheeled Connor into place in the emergency room and drew the curtains. Abby was left behind. As she stepped outside the emergency room to call in and give the others an update away from the shouting, a nurse ran past with a disturbingly large syringe in a paper-backed package. Abby saw the word "antihistamine" on the package, and her brain compared the size of the syringe (and, therefore, the most likely dose of whatever antihistamine was being used) to the dose that had been needed when Connor had been attacked by killer bees. The result was not at all reassuring.

Matt's voice came in over the coms unit.

"How does he look, Abby?"

"Bad. They have at least two doctors in there, he's going purple, and there's now a nurse running in ith an EpiPen and an antihistamine drip."

"Ouch. Is he still breathing?"

"Barely. He's wheezing like the air conditioning at the old ARC—remember, Becker?"

Ten miles away, Becker winced. "Unfortunately, I do."

"I heard them saying that he's got a fifty-fifty shot at survival without treatment. If they can find out what the poison is within twelve hours, he'll be fine for sure. He'll be spending at least two days in here no matter what, though."

"Right. Emily, you take one of these feathers," said Matt. "Becker and I will deal with the creatures. Come back when you've delivered the feather; pull rank and claim Official Secrets Act protection if they ask what it is. They should be able to isolate the toxin from the feather in time to help Connor. Let's just hope that their bites aren't venomous as well."

"Matt?"

"Yeah, Abby?"

"I think that these creatures may not be natural."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, predatory animals don't usually use their tails as weapons. Signaling devices, effective extra limbs, even occasionally mating appendages, but never as weapons. They're just too unwieldy. Besides, these things have rigid tails; even less useful, because they'd have to turn all the way around to attack prey with the tail."

"Maybe it's a side effect. Maybe their bites are venomous."

"No, there were no signs of venom glands, and these things are too active for waiting for their prey to die of a slow-acting poison to be worthwhile. So either these things were designed by someone hiding out in the future as living weapons, or there's something through that anomaly that eats them."

"I sure as hell don't want to meet whatever scares these bird-crocs enough to make them evolve porcupine quills. And what's the point of a weapon if you can't control it?"

"Helen Cutter wouldn't care."

There was silence over the coms for a few seconds. Then:

"Good point. Let's hope not, though. These things are small, and they'd be like walking Weetabix pieces to most of the creatures we fight."

"Come on, Matt," said Becker. "We have a full Special Forces squad, more EMDs than we can use, and some unconscious creatures to use as bait for their friends. I've been wanting to have a shoot-out like this for months!"

**ARC lobby**:

"Ah, Miss Sholoshkova, I presume?"

James Lester was certain that he had seen the voluptuous blonde before, but he wasn't sure where. He'd better ask Becker or Anderson about the Russian later.

The aforementioned blonde Russian smiled charmingly, impossibly white teeth glinting in the light. She took Lester's hand smoothly, her grasp considerably stronger than he was expecting.

"Ah, good day, my friend," she said in a beautiful but thick Russian accent. "I assume that you are Mr. Lester, the head of the Anomaly Research Centre?"

Her voice was a smooth alto, seductive and alluring. Damn. A sparrow*. He'd need to warn the men to be careful.

"This way, please. Here is your temporary security card; we should have a longer-term card for you within days. I hope that we are not too messy; we had only a very short notice of your arrival."

"It is no problem. I am here to observe, after all, and my superiors feel that one gets the best feel for the operations of others if they have little time to prepare."

"Ah. Sensible. May I ask, why are you here?"

"We have had over thirty alpha-team casualties in the past six months. I am the only agent to have been active for more than a year. I am here to find why your operation has had only four fatalities and one MIA in over five years of operation."

Lester winced. Those were major casualties. Alpha-team deaths were to be expected, but those casualty rates were at least one per mission. If the ARC had casualties like that…well, it was a miracle that the Russians were still operational after six months like that.

"How many missions?"

"Four in a good month. Up to six in a bad month."

Internally, April smiled. Her cock-and-bull sob story had thrown Lester off track. He thought she was just a sparrow who'd been transferred to anomaly duty, not realizing her true status. She just hoped that the real Russians didn't find out; Irina Ivanova was _particular_ about things like impersonators, and the Russians had more than enough reason to kill April already.

"Well, we are fortunate in that we have a lower casualty rate than that, and most of the deaths are from the security teams. We had a major spike during the Convergence recently, but we still have had under twenty men killed in over two years—including that unfortunate incident with the prehistoric crocodile."

"How many alpha team casualties?"

"A grand total of four deaths, one MIA, and two deaths of Prospero liaisons—which caused an issue with the whole public-private partnership chestnut. Our first tactical captain, Tom Ryan, was killed in the past about five years ago. Stephen Hart—one of our scientists—got himself eaten alive a little more than three and a half years back. Nick Cutter—our _de facto_ field leader—got shot by his insane ex, Helen Cutter, approximately six months later. Sarah Page, another scientist, was eaten in the future during a rescue mission about six months after Cutter's death. Danny Quinn—Cutter's replacement—is missing in action in the past. Our chief investor, Phillip Burton, was blown up during the Convergence. He wasn't technically part of the team, though. Neither was April Leonard, a spy that Burton got into the ARC. She manipulated Connor Temple, got him to build a prototype doomsday machine. She died during the convergence, fell and broke her neck after a fight with Abby Maitland, our animal behavior expert. Anyway, here is the elevator. We're on the fifth floor. You should meet the current alpha team in a few hours at most—they are in the field right now."

_And it was so hard to not reveal myself during that fight, too,_ thought April. _I can't wait to see the look on Maitland's face when I impale her_. She smiled internally. Other people's pain always gave her that warm fuzzy feeling.

*A type of espionage agent (usually female) trained for seduction. Stereotypically from Soviet Russia.


	3. Chapter 3

**You really need a disclaimer? The site's called . How much more obvious can you get? **

**Just in case, I own nothing but the spinetails, which I came up with while high on sugar from about sixteen slices of Chocolate Decadence cake when I was 13. Now THAT was a weird day... **

**Part Three: **

**Dartmoor. Anomaly site. **

"So, to sum it up," said Becker sarcastically. "We have three unconscious creatures with poison spines, a pack of these things out there somewhere hunting us, and there's only the three of us plus two soldiers here with our EMDs because Connor's in the hospital and Abby took half the security detail with her. And you're saying that we _shouldn't_ set up an ambush?"

"Well…when you put it that way…"

"Matt, come on. It's obviously the best move! There's even a tree _right behind us_, and there's rope in my truck. I can send a couple of the soldiers; they'll be back here before the creatures wake up."

"The part I'm worried about is that these things might be smart. There's a good chance that they won't be fooled by an ambush. Abby said that they showed advanced cooperative pack hunting techniques and moved to protect the first downed animal when the soldiers shot it. That suggests near-human intelligence, and possibly even language. I don't want to set up an ambush for creatures that might be smart enough to figure it out and turn the tables on us."

"_Matt_. We have EMDs. Plus, I've been wanting to try out this new model for the past week!"

"Look, I know that that thing's supposed to shoot like an automatic, but we really need to be careful!"

"That's why I want to do an ambush! There's nothing safer than an ambush."

"What about not attacking these things?"

"Oh, yeah, just let the man-eating bird crocodiles run rampage while we try to find some sort of magic sparkly pony to lead them back through the anomaly. Great plan, Matt."

"Magic sparkly pony?"

"It's sarcasm, Emily," said Matt, sighing and rubbing the back of his neck, which was still stiff from being thrown into a wall by a bear-dog the previous week. "It means that he's joking, sort of."

"Wait—if we could find some way to lead them through the anomaly…"

"What do you mean?"

"Ah, I just had this crazy idea of one of us covering himself in Worcestershire sauce and running like hell from the creatures."

Matt blinked. Becker grimaced apologetically.

"Sorry, mate. It's a stupid idea."

"No…if we could bait them through somehow…hey, that might work!"

"Seriously? We should cover ourselves in Worcestershire sauce and try to lure the creatures through the anomaly? Who just nixed my ambush plan because these things might be too smart?"

"Maybe not that kind of bait—but if we can use some other kind of lure, maybe a distress call…"

"Good plan. I'll crate up these three, and then we can wake them up by the anomaly. When the pack gets close, we take them through, let them out, and run like hell."

"I think I have a few stun grenades in the truck—they were supposed to be your birthday present, but they should be handy now."

"Wait—you know my birthday?"

"Jess did the hacking. Something about a special present for you? Anyway, I guess the grenades don't have to wait for tomorrow, given that we're going to be running through an anomaly with a pack of vicious predators on our tails with no backup."

"Whoah, whoah, whoah—"special present"?"

"I don't know, but judging by the way she said it, it's pretty special. Connor got you some Batwoman comics and a Superman action figure that he somehow smuggled in from America—no, I don't know how, I just know that Lester was spitting fire."

"We really shouldn't have let him go to Comic-Con."

"Well, what's done is done. Oh, and Abby got you a new pistol—a Sig Sauer nine-millimeter automatic."

"Yes! I've been begging Lester for funds for one of those for _months_!"

Matt secured the second spinetail in a dog crate provided by Emily (who had, quite sensibly, insisted on bringing a pair of large crates on this mission due to the high proportion of small deadly prehistoric creatures to large deadly prehistoric creatures).

"I'm not sure what Emily got you, and I just don't see Lester as the giving type," and here Becker and the two security men snorted with laughter, "so I can't really tell you any more. Hey, this one's starting to wake up!"

At the same time, Emily noticed that the grass on a hillock about a hundred meters away was moving in odd patterns.

"They are coming back!"

Becker wisely slung his EMD over his back and helped Matt get the last spinetail into the remaining crate.

James Lester hated the Russian already. Her thick Baikal accent and smooth, alto voice were annoyingly distracting, and the way she moved was quite disturbing. Sholoshkova walked with a light but restrained gait, almost like she was trying to hold herself back from bounding across the Hub. Lester was absolutely positive that Russians should not have blond hair, and the face—Sholoshkova's face was familiar. He had seen her before, somewhere. Probably only once or twice.

_She wasn't rotating her wrists_.

That thought came suddenly, as Lester noticed that the Russian seemed to move her arms oddly, and her forearms rippled with muscles that just seemed mildly out of place. Sholoshkova was avoiding rotating her wrists unless she had to; whenever she made a hand gesture, she kept her hands straight with regard to her forearms. She didn't flex her hands forwards or back very much, either.

Lester had asked her about this; she had given him a bog-standard response about broken wrists on an earlier mission and still getting used to having functional hands again. He doubted the story, but kept it to himself. It was a plausible, if unlikely, sob story, and perhaps the Russians were more frugal with their agents, keeping even badly injured agents on staff for what little experience they had.

The casualty rates that Sholoshkova had mentioned were sickening. In this line of work, you could expect a Nick Cutter or a Stephen Jay Hart or, heck, even the occasional Danny Quinn, but having non-security members of the alpha team dying on every mission, even on routine missions? That was unthinkable. No wonder the Russians thought that the ARC was a good role model.

Lester left Sholoshkova talking to Jess about a computer and a long-term ID code. She was insisting on being called Tanya—apparently it was a less formal form of her first name. Lester frankly didn't feel like making the effort to care.

Deciding that he was now officially angry at both the Russian and British governments in general, Lester retreated to his office and pulled out his secret whiskey bottle, only to find it broken open and empty, with a beaked, dachshund-like animal lying unconscious next to it.

Jess was showing the Russian around the menagerie when they heard Lester's howl of "_CONNOR!_" penetrate two floors and about seven walls, including the sound-dampening windows of Lester's office.

April knew that Lester was suspicious. Her alterations made it hard and painful to move her wrists in certain ways, and she had become habituated to not moving her wrists in a month of hanging out with June. June may have been psychotic—even for one of the Twelve—but she was still, like April, a Twelve augment, and so knew how much it hurt to move her wrists in certain ways with her blades retracted. Four weeks of crashing at June's apartment and getting her kicks by watching horror movies and torturing stray intelligence operatives had left April with the need to get used to the pain of moving her wrists again. Fortunately, she was a consummate actress—part of the reason she'd been recruited in the first place—but even so, her excuse was flimsy.

The bubbly young brunette, Jess, was showing April the creatures in the ARC's menagerie. A couple of raptors—they looked like _Deinonychus_, a nasty species that had jaws strong enough to snap a man's femur like a chew toy—an overweight mammoth that was munching on some genuine Osage orange fruit, a small, arboreal gogronopsian with two-inch fangs, a bear-dog the size of a rhinoceros, a leopard-sized primitive nimravid, a genuine bear-sized Paleocene arctocyonid, a vicious-looking crocodile like a mix of a sebecosuchian and a really wild boar, a bonehead dinosaur with many, many horns and frills, and some Miocene horned gophers. Last in line was a small, desert habitat with a hole at the bottom of the viewing window and a solitary small dicynodont chirping happily at the entrance of a burrow.

It was at this point that April heard Lester's howls of rage.

"Er…" said Jess, "I think that one of Connor's pets got out. I'd better go collect the creature and pacify Lester quickly, and then I need to take over coms before the backup coordinator messes something up. Can you get around by yourself?"

"Of course," said April, her Russian accent falling into place smoothly. She always kept her accents fresh—she and June had a game where one would imitate various obvious and subtle accents and the other would throw an olive at the speaker for every slip. It wasn't limited to English, either—April could do Japanese-accented Chinese and Japanese with a Thai accent. June was better with Romance languages, but April was the unquestioned best at Asian tongues.

The ridiculous little field coordinator rushed off in her ridiculous heels and hilariously impractical tight blouse and short, tight skirt. She was obviously dressed up for someone, but there were ways to look good while still being ready for a fight. April preferred black Kevlar jumpsuits, simply because they were good for protecting her perfect skin from knives and gunfire.

The assassin turned back to look at the creatures. The ARC had acquired several new creatures—the horned gophers and the arctocyonid were both definitely new. April hadn't gotten down here much on her previous mission—she'd been too busy keeping that idiot Connor Temple on topic.

April surreptitiously snapped pictures of the creatures with her smartphone. Duvall would want to see these.

Her scars ached again. She rolled up her sleeves a little and rubbed the slash marks. She'd gotten them in America two weeks before, setting a pack of raptors loose on a CIA operative. That had been fun. A pity the man hadn't screamed, although his team's screams as he was eaten alive more than made up for it. Of course, they'd been nearly a quarter-mile away, but April's enhanced hearing had let her savor every moment of their cries.

April's watch beeped, reminding her of the schedule that she had made for herself. She used her temporary ID to swipe herself out of the menagerie, and "borrowed" a laptop. She slid a thin, white jump drive out of her sleeve and plugged it in.

A little icon showing seven flames popped up, along with a dialogue box.

LAUNCH ARROWS OF SEKHMET? Y/N

April pressed the "Y" button, and smiled. She disconnected the jump drive, snapped it in half with her fingers—again, being an augment came in handy—and tossed the remains in the trash. She then logged on to a dummy Gmail account using a private Google Chrome window and sent a message to Duvall. Then she wiped the computer with a neodymium magnet that she kept in her left jeans pocket.

All done. Now all she had to do was wait until she felt like killing the ARC team. This would be a wonderful vacation…

_Why the hell didn't I take the honorable discharge and leave? _ Captain Hilary Becker asked himself as he ran from a pack of skin-shredding future crocodiles. _I mean, two freaking years in Afghanistan—I saw more than fifty men get killed in front of me, I just barely survived that IED thanks to Hanson pulling me out of the way—and I volunteered for another assignment. Despite being offered an early retirement with honorable discharge and a couple of medals on the bargain for taking out that Qaeda cell while carrying Dawson. How freaking stupid was that? I had a way out, I could be sitting in freaking Tahiti right now sipping Mai Tais, and instead I'm running for my life from a pack of vicious, skin-flaying monsters while carrying a pair of not-quite-as-unconscious-as-I-would-like monsters in this dog crate, while Matt gets a smaller crate with only one croc-thing—which, I am absolutely certain, is the smallest one. Somehow, this doesn't seem quite fair. _

The annoying part of his brain that had insisted on going into Special Forces chose this moment to mention Jess, and her lips, and her voice, and her hair, and her—not the sorts of things a soldier should be thinking about while running for his life, interjected the part of his brain that wanted to urinate very badly.

Behind him, Becker heard his security team shouting and firing. He heard one of the men—Sergeant Otis, a rather young fellow who liked to read Incredible Hulk comics—yell over coms that he couldn't hit the creatures because the grass was too high.

The anomaly was just two hundred meters ahead. One-seventy-five. One-fifty. Come on…

Connor was still out cold, although the swelling had gone down a little. Abby was holding his hand in an iron grip.

The doctors had said that it would be about half an hour before they could find a good match for the toxin. A quick phone call to Lester had ensured that they didn't ask questions about the quill. In the meantime, Connor was hooked up to an antihistamine drip and a whole suite of monitors.

Abby was holding on to Connor with one hand and channel-surfing with the other. She finally settled on a superhero movie that she vaguely recognized—_Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer_. Connor had made her watch it about two weeks before, claiming that "Chris Evans totally pwns Doctor Doom's ass in it! It'll be awesome!" Abby had found it to be overblown and slightly dull, with far too much attention paid to Jessica Alba despite her utter lack of talent, and not enough to the (considerably more talented) actors playing the big rock guy (who was clearly having far too much fun in the role) and the fiery guy, who Abby recognized as the same actor who had played Captain America in _The Avengers_ (again, Connor's idea. He had gotten a rather passionate kiss for that one, because it had actually been quite fun, despite the ridiculous space portal).

"Connor, if anything could get you to wake up, this would."

Of course, he didn't respond. So Abby waited and listened to Matt and Becker pant with exertion as they ran, while the worry gnawed at her insides.


	4. Chapter 4

**Special note: Brackets are ANs. Italics are either creature dialogue (if creature POV) or character thoughts. **

**Part 4: **

**Home Office. **

Harold Duvall was having a pleasant day. A few bribes, and the Prime Minister's secretaries had handled everything without letting the idiot find out. April had launched the Arrows virus, and the ARC's files were downloading themselves onto Duvall's personal computer slowly but virtually undetectably.

The Arrows of Sekhmet virus had been designed by scientists working for Duvall's superiors as an untraceable computer worm. The program could be adapted to send data to any specific external computer, piggybacking off of the host computer's Internet access. It took up a small enough amount of room on the connection and in the computer that it was virtually impossible to notice by traditional means, and was protected from scanning programs and deletion attempts by a prototype eternity code. No government or organization—even Duvall's superiors—had the capability to stop it. No malware sweeper or virus scanner would detect it, and most such programs would be deactivated by a self-defense code built into the virus. The Arrows virus was the most advanced code in computer science, literally decades ahead of anything else in the world. Untraceable, unstoppable, and self-adapting.

Duvall estimated that he had about two weeks before Connor Temple caught on, then a week at most before the ARC technician found a way to stop the virus.

Fortunately, there were other, more…unsubtle methods of getting the information and technology that Duvall's superiors wanted. The biological augmentation program had created the Twelve. There was no weapon that could stop the Twelve, short of a full-scale nuke. Even then, it would be foolish to bet against the augments. The Twelve were the ultimate killing machines.

Duvall himself had seen September kill an entire ten-man American Special Forces team in less than five seconds, while blindfolded and temporarily deafened. She had just walked up to the soldiers, and had blindfolded herself and put in the earplugs while telling them that she was there to kill them. The augment had navigated by _smell_, using the scent of gunpowder to find and disable the men's guns. Her blades had been beautiful, in a horrible way, even with blood and gray matter dripping off the tips...Duvall shuddered.

Some days, Harold Duvall wondered what he had gotten himself into when he had answered that mysterious caller all those years ago.

**ARC headquarters. James Lester's office. **

To say that James Lester was merely frustrated would be like saying that the sun is quite warm. This was now the sixth time in five weeks that the infernal little monster known as "Sid" had gotten loose in the ARC. And this time it had somehow gnawed right through a glass bottle without cutting itself. James Lester _hated_ those who escaped their just desserts.

In addition, there were a pack of vicious predators chasing two of his best men through an anomaly, his team's geek was in the hospital for the third time in four months, and the Prime Minister was looking to make more budget cutbacks. Budget cutbacks! As if the ARC wasn't on a shoestring as it was! Plus, of course, there was the Russian.

James Lester made a mental note to himself to call his friend Yuri in the Russian government. Sholoshkova had said that her team was in the intelligence bureau—and Yuri had hinted in the past that he knew something about an anomaly team in said bureau.

Damn, when was the last time they had talked? Two years ago? Things certainly had been busy. He would have to go over his list of contacts. Tim West in the CIA, Xi Yongjin in the PLA, that man in the German government, the Frenchman with the accent—Lester hadn't talked to them in years. He'd need to check and see how many favors they owed him.

"Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry! He chewed his way out—I guess we need some better mesh for the enclosure…"

Jess bustled into his office, spewing a nonstop stream of apologies, and removed the dicynodont from Lester's formerly secret whiskey drawer. She backed out, now both spewing apologies and cooing at the infernal little beast.

Lester felt his blood pressure rising. He put in his earbud and listened in on coms, figuring that that would at least be better than the dicynodont.

He was wrong.

**Dartmoor. Anomaly site. **

**Creature POV. **

The spinetail alpha called out signals as she ran.

_Squad Alpha, with me. Take out the big prey. Go in fast, nab the hard-nest-thing, get out. Do not let it point its bang-stick at you. Squad Bravo, the leader. Take it down, don't let it get you, grab the hard-nest-thing, and run. Squad Charlie, backup. _

_Contact left! _Squad Bravo's leader chittered. _Two strangeprey, with bang sticks, black pelts. Evasive action! Take cover! _

_Scatter, _chittered the alpha, adding a whistled expletive. _Get away from them and regroup closer to the target. Go in at a perpendicular if you can. _

_Three more prey incoming, _said Squad Charlie's leader, loud but calm. _Should we switch to tail signals? _

_No. Stay with chirps. These prey seem to have poor hearing. Approaching large prey target now. _

The big prey made some noise and changed course, getting too close to the flankers on his right. They swerved to avoid the prey's bangstick **[EMD gun, to you humans]**, and the formation broke.

The alpha swore to herself—a sound not unlike a mammoth relieving itself—and called out a regroup, panting heavily.

_Hang in there,_ she thought to her captured comrades. _We're coming, and we will flay the foolish hides of these loathsome strangeprey and free you from their clutches. _

_They're tracking us using the grass! _chittered Squad Charlie's leader from a scraggly tree, jumping from branch to branch as she desperately dodged EMD pulses. _Since there's so much grass here, they can see when you're getting close! Not well enough to use their bangsticks, but well enough to track us! _The spinetail jumped out of her tree, avoiding a pulse, and called her squad for a charge.

_Stick to the plan,_ shrieked the alpha, feeling the fatigue in her bones. _Don't waste time attacking the strangeprey themselves unless it's for a distraction. Squad Alpha, regroup and strike. Adaptive formation—none of this pincer-movement crap. _

The squad fanned out. Ahead, the strangeprey made a funny noise.

**POV: Becker. **

Captain Hilary Becker's brain was moving extremely quickly. A small group of creatures had appeared in his and Matt's ways as they charged the anomaly. Becker had made the executive decision to grab Matt and pull him into a turn, in order to loop around the creatures and lead them back through the anomaly without risking painful death.

Becker had pulled off this maneuver rather impressively, but unfortunately the creatures had tried to cut off his and Matt's loop. Fortunately, the animals seemed to tire quickly, and so the humans and their pursuers were right back where they had started. Another two-hundred-meter dash for the fate of everyone present.

Becker reminded himself to play a prank on Connor later to make up for that fantasy movie-induced dramatic phrasing.

Looking back, he realized that a group of about six of the creatures was coming for him in an unmistakable pincer movement.

With a quick curse, Becker veered right. The creatures erupted in chitters and broke off the pursuit. Becker looked back, and realized that they were regrouping.

_Shit_.

Matt was almost to the anomaly, but there was another group of creatures on his tail and Becker was a hundred meters back. The soldier leaned forwards and charged as fast as he could. The creatures followed behind him, and Becker wheezed out another curse.

The security team was shouting and running for Becker. He realized that more creatures were between him and his soldiers. The EMDs weren't working through the grass. Emily was hanging back and giving orders. At least she was a little less reserved these days, although a part of Becker was annoyed at this usurpation of his and Matt's authority. The rest of him told that part to shut up and run.

Matt got through, but his pursuers followed.

Fifty yards to go. The captive creatures were shrieking and slamming against the walls of the crate. Becker heard the backup field coordinator's voice over coms urging him to run faster.

_What the hell do you think I'm doing, you ****ing idiot?_

And the creatures were running past him with twenty-five meters to go. The big one with the snout scars turned around and raised her tail like a banner.

Becker skidded to a halt, panting heavily. The creature's eyes were huge, dark, and intelligent. It raised its head to Becker, baring its throat.

_They're intelligent,_ Becker realized with a stab of shock. _That's a gesture of respect—even I can tell that. Aggression would be with the head down, to use that horny scale in a fight. I hope. _

The creature approached. The others—three of them—started to move forwards, teeth bared, but the creature flicked its tail and they backed off.

_This one's a leader. He—or maybe she—can tell the others to back off. So they have a chain of command, at least at the squad level. Is this part of a larger military? Oh, bad thought. Bad thought. _

The alpha whistled something and cocked its head towards the dog crate. The captive creatures banged on it.

"Jess, they're intelligent! The leader wants me to release the captive creatures!"

"Jess is out right now. I'd be glad to mark that…"

"Fine, Owen, then! These creatures are intelligent, and their leader wants me to release the captive creatures. I can't do that until I get through the anomaly, so I'm going to rush through them."

"Becker, they'll kill you," said Abby from the hospital. "You saw what happened to that guy. You can't do this!"

"Sorry. It's our only chance. Matt already went through—if I get hurt, I'll be enough of a distraction for him to get back."

There was a rustling in the grass behind him, and four more creatures emerged. The alpha chirped a quick signal to them.

"Look, I only have a few seconds before they decide to kill me and figure out the crate for themselves. If I die, tell Jess that I'm sorry."

Becker picked up the dog crate and steeled himself for pain.

**Anomaly Research Centre. **

April was relaxing with a quart of vodka. It was important to keep up appearances as a Russian (hence the stereotypical beverage), and her system could take up to a gallon of average vodka without intoxication. Another benefit of augmentation.

That infernal Lester was yelling at someone—probably the Minister. April smirked a little at that thought. Harold Duvall was an asshole, not to mention a terrible actor. The Twelve had a betting pool running on how long it would take until he blew his cover. The smart money was on six months or less. April had bet on two months at most.

Deciding that she needed a little excitement, April plugged in an earpiece that Jess had given her earlier. After about thirty seconds of listening, she figured out what they were fighting. Spinetails. Tough creatures. April's employers had a whole pack of the things at a location in Iran. They had been using "behavioral modification" on the creatures because they were too intelligent for brain chips to work properly.

Another person might have been put off by April's employers' use of torture on sentient, nonhuman life forms. April didn't care. The money was good, and she wasn't a hypocrite—she enjoyed torturing random animals and people herself, and whatever else you could say about April, she was definitely not a hypocrite.

In truth, the money was the main reason April had signed up in the first place. The augmentations were just a bonus tacked on to the cash. Of course, unauthorized freelancing was not allowed for any of the Twelve, but the money was good enough that it didn't really matter.

She chuckled a bit at Becker's attempt at a farewell. Amateur. If he knew spinetails, he would know that once the alpha decided to try communication you were pretty much safe. The spinetails killed their prey in a horrible way, but to them it was just how they were born—they didn't really enjoy it, and they usually tried to ease their prey's suffering by going for the arteries first. They were actually quite nice people, once you got to know them. They hated April, perhaps because they could sense her insanity and sadism.

Duvall emailed her private business account. The Arrows virus was downloading the entire ARC database.

April allowed herself a purr of pleasure. She could practically _taste_ Connor Temple's blood. Infiltration mission or not, she knew that she would get the termination order as soon as that annoying little man found the computer virus.

She checked her _other_ account, the one that her employers didn't know about, the one that was protected by a pilfered copy of Connor Temple's own security system. The one she used for communication with other Twelve augments.

There was a bunch of standard stuff; July still hit "reply all" to all her emails, so there was an update on September's family (she had asked July to check up on them occasionally), and June was still trying to coordinate that weekend in Las Vegas (despite the standing kill order that the American CIA had on all of the Twelve). January had contracted a nasty infection from a fleshreaver in Pakistan that she had been sent to bring in, and November was still looking for a way in to the Russian anomaly team's new base.

At the bottom was a little note from October, dated one month back. It read:

_From: perceft10 _

_ To: iamnumber4 _

_ Subject: Sexy new threat. _

_ Hey, April sweetheart, _

_Just wanted to let you know, Operation Falcon finally got around to genetically augmenting their agents. Davies is out for your blood for setting those raptors on Foss. He has major muscle augments and an intractinium skeleton, plus armblades that they TOTALLY cribbed off of us. The others have augments as well, some rather drastic, but you'll still be able to recognize them. Vilette Tcherine has some sexy, sexy hair, and with her new mods…mmmmm, nice and long, down to her knees if she lets it out. Try to save her for me if you come across her, hun—I love long-haired brunettes. _

_Oh, and Agent Peregrine nearly got his ass killed by a gorgonopsian trying to be romantic for Stephanie, but he survived long enough to be augmented and to have his skeleton replaced. You owe me twenty bucks. _

_Heard that the Council has you prepping to go back into the ARC—I hope they let you show your augments this time. I got security footage of you letting Maitland pwn your ass—that sucked, hon. You deserve the chance to show your true power. _

_Your loving part-time squeeze, _

_October_

April didn't bother notifying Duvall—October would've notified her superiors just after sending that email, and they would've briefed anyone in the need-to-know loop.

So. Area 52's team was a threat now. Stupid secret CIA divisions, stopping her employers' world-domination plans. They would feel her—well, not wrath quite so much as sadism and boredom—soon enough.


	5. Chapter 5

**Line-o'-litigation: Obviously, I do not own Primeval. If I did, I would be on a Caribbean vacation, not writing this. **

**Dartmoor. Anomaly site. **

Captain Becker was amazed at first as the creatures let him through. The alpha had raised his/her tail when he had picked the crates back up, but as he moved forwards, the creature had flicked its head, and the creatures had backed off to both sides, leaving Becker with a clear run to the anomaly.

Becker was slightly less happy when the creatures moved to cut off his retreat. Well, it was the anomaly or nothing at this point.

"Wish me luck," Becker said, and he stepped through.

Instead of the carnage and post-apocalyptic surroundings he expected, he saw Matt, apparently unharmed, sitting in the middle of a cactus-filled desert surrounded by bored-looking creatures and an empty dog crate.

"Hey, Becker. When you said that you thought they were smart, I thought you meant wolf smart, not figuring-out-dog-crate-latches smart."

Behind Becker, the anomaly pulsed, spitting out the remaining creatures. The alpha made a buzzing sound.

Becker turned. The alpha looked him right in the eyes for almost three seconds.

"Becker?"

"It's OK. I think that it's realized that we're intelligent."

The alpha made a chirping sound, then raised its head high, tail held almost to the ground. It reared backwards, using its tail as a prop as it shifted its weight backwards, and started into a chirping, buzzing speech that was accompanied by many motions of its impressively clawed hands.

"Uh…OK…"

**Topeka, Kansas. June 5****th****, 52192015. Creature POV: **

_And in short, _finished the alpha several minutes later, _we, the spinetails of the Rrr'shik'chirr nation, do most humbly apologize for attacking your people. We were hungry and in a strange land, and we did not realize that your species was sentient, as in our nation, no known mammals are capable of logic and complex thought. We apologize for the misunderstanding and offer our deepest condolences to the nest-mates, brood-mother and alpha of the member of your species that we killed, and we hope that we can negotiate a treaty despite this little diplomatic hiccup. Furthermore, we are willing to submit to whatever punishment your alpha and her mates deem to mete out. _

The alpha paused for breath. She couldn't understand the rumbling, guttural speech of the strange mammals, and she was pretty sure that they couldn't understand her. She just hoped that this black-pelted creature, whoever or whatever she was, was a senior daughter of the mammals' alpha female and not a low-ranking pack-migrant. If this hunter was a pack-migrant, or, worse yet, a male, then things would be rough.

The big creature bent down to the strange nest, and pressed something on it. The alpha raised her tail as a warning, but then part of the cage _opened_, almost like some alien cactus flower, and the two captured spinetails came rushing out, chirping happily.

The alpha released a breath that she didn't realize she had been holding. Now they were getting somewhere.

**Anomaly Research Centre. Present day. **

"Thank you, Horace. I owe you a big one for this."

James Lester hung up his secure cell phone. His employees sometimes thought that he didn't care about them. They were wrong; Lester cared deeply for all of them, he was just easily annoyed when they acted unprofessionally and canoodled in the corridors.

Hopefully Becker would like his present. Lester had just finished calling an old friend in the Prime Minister's office by the rather unfortunate name of Horace Buttman. Horace, or "The Bum" as the annoying rugby players had always called him at Oxford, had promised to do a favor for his old flatmate by getting two of Lester's employees into a military demonstration of a new ground-to-air missile model, followed by VIP access to an exclusive country club shooting range, and concluding with a romantic candle-lit dinner in London's most exclusive restaurant, which would of course be empty save for the two aforementioned employees.

Lester always got a warm fuzzy feeling from blatant nepotism and efficient, businesslike corruption. Bending and even breaking the rules for his employees was surprisingly fun, although of course he would never let them know that.

Lester dialed another number on his secure phone—Tim West, a CIA operative who worked as an admin for the woman in charge of the deep science division.

West picked up on the third ring.

"Yo, Lester old buddy! How are things on the miserably damp side of the Atlantic?"

"Pleasant as always, West. How is the country of gun nuts and annoying televangelists?"

"Oh, same old, same old. How's the team?"

"Busy doing classified things. I just finished sending our resident gun nut and his girlfriend on a disguised vacation."

West chuckled. "Pulling favors for your employees? That's pretty nice for you, old man."

"Well, they're the best of the best. Good work above and beyond the call of duty should be rewarded, especially in my division."

"Decent point. I guess this isn't just a social call—I have fifteen minutes here and I owe you a few favors, so fire away with your questions or whatever."

"I haven't been able to reach Yuri Constantinovich—do you know his new cell number?"

"Sure. I'll email it to you, encoded. He's got a job like ours now, top secret, anomaly detail, elite amateur team, et cetera."

"Also, do you happen to know of a Russian anomaly operative named Tatiana Sholoshkova? She's blonde, average height, thin but wiry, seductive, probably trained as a sparrow, moves her hands in unusual ways?"

"Er…not sure about the description, but I think the Russians have an operative by that name. I haven't talked to Yuri in a while, though, so she may have left or been reposted."

"Thank you. How is your team?"

"We had an alpha-team fatality a few months back. Otherwise, I can't tell you; this stuff is well above top secret, and I only know a little of it. I'm just the Director's admin."

"Which Director?"

"Area 52. Director Stacy Harrison. She's dating the President."

Lester, normally unflappable, did a double-take on that one.

"The president is lesbian?"

"Yeah. They've been dating for eight months—there's an office betting pool on when they'll get engaged. I got inside info from the Director herself, so I changed my bets last night. I'm about to win fifty grand due to the long odds."

"Excellent. So, Area 52? I don't know much about that one—is it new?"

"Yeah. Consolidated last year. We have an anomaly team, a materials research division, and a weapons manufacturing team. Plus, there's the…well, things they do to you in Area 52."

"What do you mean, Tim? Come on, spit it out! I haven't got all day!"

"The _do things_ to you in Area 52. I don't know what, exactly, but I've heard stories. People who can climb glass bare-handed, people who can punch through walls, people who can _fly_. The other admins and liaisons tell stories in the mess hall—apparently nobody's ever seen an actual Area 52 operative up close. They have their own mess hall, their own garage, and even a separate elevator. More, I can't tell you. They're incredibly secret—I only know what programs they have, but none of the specifics."

"I would advise you to take those lunatic stories with a grain of salt, West."

"Oh, I've heard that before. Trust me, I'm serious."

"Uh-huh. What's your anomaly team called, by the way?"

"Operation Falcon. Not as simple as the ARC, but it sure sounds better. Rumor has it that one of the 52s on the team insisted on the name, because he used to be a major geek before he became a 52 and thought the name sounded cool."

"Oh, wonderful. Another geek in an important position. Any technological advances that I am unaware of?"

"Sorry, Lester, but I can't say any more—heck, if I get caught telling you what I already did, it's probably treason, even though Britain's part of NATO and a major US ally. This is Presidential-mandate secret."

"Understood. I need to leave now, anyway. I'll keep in touch with you, West."

"Later, Lester."

As James Lester hang up, he felt a little mild amusement at the incompetence, gullibility, and hyperbole of Americans. Flying people. Hah! Obviously someone had been feeding West false information. Apparently at least _some_ of the Americans were catching on.

That reminded Lester—he had to go and cook up some more misinformation for the not-quite-secure hard drive. A story about battle robots and experimental drone warfare would be enough to convince the nutters and make the general public accept the official story.

It was odd, though, how utterly _convinced_ West had been about those lunatic stories.

**Dartmoor. Anomaly site. **

Becker and Matt stepped back through the anomaly. Emily and the security team were standing about twenty feet ahead, by the locking device.

Emily was open-mouthed, an Becker's security men were wide-eyed and swearing.

"Hey guys," said Becker nonchalantly. "We're back."

Precisely one-sixteenth of a second later, Captain Hilary Becker clapped his hand to his ear and yelled in pain as Jess screamed with relief and newly released anxiety. Her voice blasted through the coms units, which the assistant field coordinator had accidentally cranked up to full in a moment of mind-blowing idiocy.

**Mother of Mercy General Hospital. **

Abby had taken out her coms link when Connor had started coughing and waking up, but Jess's squeal and subsequent tongue-lashing of Becker had been rather clearly audible over the movie, despite the fact that it was in the middle of the final fight scene.

"Wow. Am I glad that I'm not on the receiving end of that," said Connor thickly, his lips and face still swollen.

Abby chuckled despite herself. "Connor, if you _ever_ do something like this again, I promise you that you will _never _hear the end of it."

Connor groaned. "Don't suppose I can just take you out to see _Avengers 2: Age of Ultron_ next week and make up for it?"

"No. Although you can probably take Becker and Matt if it's anything like the last one."

"Yeah, Joss Whedon promised lots of explosions and guns."

"Then Becker will love it. I won't be with you—I need to get to work on planning the expansion for the menagerie."

"Aawww…it just won't be the same without you!"

"I know. But we're having a girls' night out—Jess, Emily and I finally managed to wrestle a day off from Lester. We're going for dinner and drinks at this Tibetan place down by Ye Olde Cheese."

"Guess I'll have to settle for the movie, then."

"Shouldn't be too much of a loss—I know how much you love the Avengers."

Jess stopped screaming over Coms. Abby sighed and put her earpiece back in. Matt's voice was the first thing she heard.

"So, Jess, is there anything important that you wanted to tell us?"

"Yes. Yes, sorry. Becker, you are in _so_ much trouble! Right, the reason I was called away—the Russians sent one of their anomaly operatives. A woman named Tatiana Sholoshkova—she's very nice, pretty, has great taste. I will be watching you while she is around."

"The Russians have an anomaly team? I thought that they left that with their general weird stuff bureau. And what the hell is this woman doing here, anyway?"

"The Russians have had catastrophic casualty rates—they sent her to shadow us and see if there's anything in the way that we do things that might help them avoid losing more agents."

"Oh, great. An incompetent pen-pusher, out in the field. Wonderful." Becker's voice was snide and mildly annoyed. "Lock the anomaly, Matt."

"It's just for a few months. And besides, she's their best agent!"

"And how was that factoid determined?"

"Er…she's the only one to have survived more than six months for the past three years?"

That made Abby wince. She could hear a couple of gasps over her coms unit.

"Holy…_six months_? Given the anomaly rates we've been seeing from Russia—that's insane! How the hell…"

"I don't know Becker. You can ask her yourself tomorrow—she just left to go get an apartment."

"Jess, this is Abby. I just wanted to let you know that Connor's swelling is down, and the doctor says that he can leave in three hours. We'll head straight home, OK?"

"Alright. I'll punch your time cards for you—or whatever the equivalent here is."

**Topeka, Kansas. June 5****th****, 52192015. **

The spinetail alpha turned from the now-solid ball of light with a sigh. That had been a _weird _day. Mammals that could think? Who would have thought of it?

Well, the ball was closed now, and the captured hunters were back with only mild headaches, except for one who was missing a tail feather (not that it mattered very much), and the strange thinking mammals had returned to their own world. Hopefully never to return, what with that complete disaster of a first contact and the multiple injuries on both sides.

The alpha thought of the way the creatures had changed tactics so swiftly to deal with the completely unfamiliar threat of spinetails, and shivered. Those creatures had probably never fought anything like the pack, and they adapted almost instantly.

The alpha scented a _kikinalo_, and sounded out a hunting call. Her daughters and their mates and chicks still needed to eat. She thanked her lucky stones that at least nobody had been killed.

**Epilogue: **

**21****st**** century. The evening of "Tatiana's" introduction. **

April was instant-messaging her comrades in the Twelve. Apparently February had a new boy-toy (emphasis on the toy, not so much on the boy, or even living human, by the time she was done with him), November was bored and looking for something to do, and August was sending pictures from her French holiday (a normal vacation, with an addition of an assassination on the President of France in her spare time). Just a normal day, then.

"Don't move," said a gruff baritone voice behind her. "I don't know who the hell you really are or what the Twelve are, but I do know that you are sitting right here until I can call this in."

April sighed internally. She'd heard and smelled the man, of course, but the sheer amount of information that these new CIA agents gave away without realizing it was ridiculous. This moron had just told her that he, and likely his superiors, did not know who she really was, presenting an easy out. The CIA really needed to train its agents to say nothing with many words, a surprisingly useful skill.

April spun in her chair and extended her armblade, a foot-long, quarter-inch-thick blade of an effectively indestructible bluish metal that her superiors called "intractinium". The blade stabbed through the gun's barrel with a scraping noise. She lashed out with her other arm, sliding the blade out and decapitating the moron.

The man toppled a little more loudly than April would have liked, and his head landed with just a tad too much noise. Crap. The rug was replaceable and highly absorbent, and April kept a lot of bleach on hand to deal with the smell of blood in occasions like this, but the noise may have alerted her landlady.

A quick search revealed that the man was a CIA clandestine ops agent. So, they were on to her—or at least one of her aliases. Probably "Angel" Popov, the Ukranian low-rent hit woman. If Clandestine Ops was involved instead of Area 52—and since the 52s were augmented now, and the dead man had been pure, unmodified human, that likelihood was almost certain—then her true identity was safe, for now.

April heard her landlady on the stairs. Normally she wouldn't bother with hiding the body, but she liked this apartment, and anyway Miss April Leonard (who was still officially the tenant here, despite the alias's death at New Dawn) needed to keep up her appearances as a kind, slightly distracted young lady who was always cheerful and helpful towards old women such as her landlady.

April wiped her armblades on a dirty blouse, and quickly moved the couch slightly to hide the body form the doorway.

She was about to open the door to her landlady's knock when she remembered to retract her blades.

"Oh, hello there, Miss Leonard," exclaimed the little old woman when April opened the door. "Fancy seeing you back so soon! You needn't worry about the rent darling, with the market as it is…"

"I always pay when I'm on a trip, Mrs. Cole. It's no problem, especially since it means that I can leave my things here instead of taking them with me."

Mrs. Cole laughed. God, but April hated that sound, and the woman's infernal pink cat sweaters, and her damn _niceness_.

"Oh, April, you're such a sweet little girl!"

April hated it when people like Mrs. Cole patted her on the cheek.

_Control, _she thought. _Killing this annoying woman would cause too many problems_.

April just hoped that the landlady wouldn't smell the blood.

"Well, it's good to have you back at any rate! You should nip down for some supper with me later; I've made boiled parsnips!"

April hated parsnips more than anything else in the world—they reacted badly with her altered intestines, causing the lining of her duodenum to peel off and pass through her system (which was even more painful than it sounds).

She forced a natural-looking smile. "Maybe later, Mrs. Cole. I have some tidying up to do tonight. Maybe I'll come down for tea tomorrow; it has been a long time!"

"Oh, well, all right then, dear. But just remember, if you need anything, just give me a call!"

April closed the door politely, notified her superiors of the incident, and proceeded to neatly dice the dead CIA agent. When she was done, she wrapped his remains in a set of old clothes that she kept around for just this purpose, packed the bundles into some paper bags (kept around for the same reason), loaded the trunk of her Prius, and drove about twenty miles outside of London, where she dumped the assorted meat chunks into the Thames.

_And to think_, she said to herself as she drove back, _Most SNAFUs are even more unusual, in my business_.

**And that's a wrap for Episode One. **

**Next time (hopefully by next week): A pack of **_**Dilophosaurus**_** in the Forest of Dean. Chaos, confusion—and a school group in the wrong place at the wrong time. Oh, and someone's spyware isn't as advanced at they thought. **


End file.
